


Meet Again On Separate Paths

by LovelyPoet



Category: The Neverending Story (Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dreams, F/M, POV Multiple, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/pseuds/LovelyPoet
Summary: Bastian wants to find a way back, but Fantasia isn't just going to wait.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mtgat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, mtgat! 
> 
> This wound up being a little bit of a mish-mash of book and movie(s), and not quite what I expected it to turn into when I started it.

On the first Saturday of the new year it snows, the kind of slow drifting flakes that make everything feel quiet and muffled. Like almost every Saturday since the book, Bastian goes to Mr. Coreander's bookshop. The old man lets him in, fixes him cocoa, and watches him browse through the new arrivals. Bastian skims his hands over covers, traces titles, reads first lines. Always looking for Fantasia.

Disappointed again this week, Bastian sighs and sprawls on his belly on the floor of the bookshop. He flips the pages of a battered copy of Don Quixote back and forth.

"Should I read this?" Bastian asks.

"If you like," Mr. Coreander replies as he scribbles into the thick, leather-bound ledger on his desk and riffles through a tall stack of invoices. Bastian's not sure where they came from since in the months and months since he first tumbled into the shop, he's never seen anyone else come in.

"It won't take me back to Fantasia," Bastian sighs.

"No," Mr. Coreander says.

"Sometimes I wish I'd never come back," Bastian says, and Mr. Coreander looks at him with sudden sharp concern. "I could be off having great adventures right now instead of stuck where nothing ever changes."

"Or you would be lost to both worlds, a boy with no more memories has no more stories." Mr. Coreander says.

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_The strength of Bastian's wishes has knit Fantasia back together again, and it is growing into new sprawling stories wound around the old. And while those who were there before do not forget the Nothing, when the Great Council of Fantasia gathers before the Empress in the highest reaches of the Ivory Tower it is as as though they expect all to return to before._

_"Atreyu has volunteered for another long and dangerous mission at my behest," she says to the gathered councilors and messengers, and they roar their approval of the young hero. She waits until the ovation settles, then she rises from from her dais, and says "And I have decided that I will accompany him."_

_The Magnolia Pavilion descends into cacophony, voices of every pitch and raised in shock._

_"Your highness," a water sprite calls. "You would leave us?"_

_"No," she responds, casting her eyes to the far edge of the Pavilion where Atreyu sits astride Falkor's back. "I would join you."_

_And so it is, that the Childlike Empress of Fantasia leaves the comforts and isolation of the Ivory Tower. A handmaiden takes her place upon the great dais, while the Empress finds a home against the sleek and shimmering body of a luck dragon. She spends long hours gazing up into an endless sea of stars as she listens to Atreyu tell her his versions of stories she already knows._

_Together they visit the gnomics, Engywook and Urgl, and she and Atreyu both kiss them and embrace them in thanks._

_"Without you," she says, "Atreyu would surely have perished before the Mirror Gate and there would only be Nothing."_

_That night, when they are nearly hoarse from singing and exhausted from dancing, she laughs for the first time, feeling it well up inside her until it spills out -- a bright beautiful sound like the ringing of a hundred perfectly struck bells. From that moment she is known to all who meet them only as Moonchild._  
  
"Did you know?" Bastian asks on a fresh spring day when the first green leaves are unfolding on the elm trees up and down the street. "About me and Fantasia? That I'd become a part of the Neverending Story?"

"Really now," Mr. Coreander says. "A strange boy barges into my store on a Thursday morning, and I'm supposed to know he's going to run off and not only name the Empress but become a champion of Fantasia? Is that what you think?"

"I think you did, or at least... you hoped"," Bastian says, and as soon as the words are out he feels the truth of it all the way down to his bones. "I think you missed having someone to talk about Fantasia with."

"Or perhaps," Mr. Coreander says turns in his chair and begins to refill his pipe, "I saw something familiar in you. Perhaps I thought that you needed Fantasia as much as I had when I was your age. And perhaps I did hope the book would call to you. But Bastian, you have to stop living your entire life trying to go back. Do you understand?"

Bastian shrugs.

That night, he dreams of endless plains that he has never seen, tall green grasses swaying lazily in a warm breeze, and the low constant buzz of crickets. He is standing on the edge of a river to wide and wild to cross. On the other bank, Atreyu is kneeling, drinking clear water from his cupped hands. He looks up, and his mouth splits into a wide smile. He calls to Bastian, but no matter how Bastian strains, he can't hear the words over the rush of the water.

Bastian wakes with a jolt, eyes snapping open to an empty room.

| 

   
  
 

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" _I saw him," Atreyu says to Moonchild when he returns to their camp. "I tried to speak to him, but he was across the Thundering River, and the water stole my voice."_

_"Was he much changed?" Moonchild asks, leaning forward. Her hair hangs long and loose, spilling around her shoulders in gentle curls, and her cheeks are pink and eyes bright and clear, nothing like the pale shadow Atreyu first saw at the Ivory Tower._

_"No," Atreyu says, thinking about it. "It was him just as I first saw in the Mirror of the Southern Oracle,"_

_"He is stuck in memories," Moonchild frowns._

_"But at least he hasn't forgotten," Falkor's deep voice rumbles.  
_

_"Do you think he'll be able to come back, though?" Atreyu asks. "Someday? He must be curious about his wishes. Doesn't he want to see us?"_

_"The journey to Fantasia is difficult, no matter how much he may want it," Moonchild says. She gestures for Atreyu to come closer, and when he stands before her, she reaches out and presses her hand against Auryn where it rests beneath his shirt.  "Auryn will not let a human come to us twice the same way. He cannot return until he is ready to enter a new door."  
_

_Atreyu sighs and bows his head._

_"We should sleep," he says. "It is still several days to the Night Forest. Yes, even with the best luck, Falkor, and we don't know what awaits us there."_

_"Adventure," Moonchild says. "Bastian has made sure of that. And someday it will be enough, and he will return so we can begin something new."_

_"I will believe, Moonchild," Atreyu says. "Because you believe."_

_She kisses his forehead, a soft dry press of her lips that makes his cheeks warm. That night her fingers twine in his as they sleep. In the morning, Falkor slips easily into the sky with them astride his back and they speed forward on their journey._

   
  
Months pass into years and, slowly but surly, change comes with them. Bastian goes camping with his father in the summer, makes friends at school who stuff notes filled with terrible puns into his locker, and stays up all night to watch a meteor shower that sends thousands of streaks of light across the sky. He joins the cross country team and learns to love the burn of exertion in his lungs and legs. His father teaches him to drive. He starts reading Don Quixote three separate times before he finishes it. He kisses a girl in the middle of the gym at the homecoming dance and a boy in the dark empty hallway by the auditorium after hours on the last day of the school year.

He begins working at Mr. Coreander's shop rather than just spending aimless hours there.

"How long did it take you to go back?" Bastian asks on a stifling Sunday in July when it's nearly too hot to move. Mr. Coreander is at his desk, with his shirt-sleeves are unbuttoned and rolled up past his elbows. He's been fanning himself with the folded sports section of the day's newspaper, but the question makes him go very still.

"Why do you ask?" He finally says.

"I've been trying so hard, to do what you said. To live in the here and now, to make my own stories. But…" Bastian shrugs and he slumps back into himself. "I still miss it so much, and I keep looking, but I can't find the way."

"Bastian." Mr. Coreander reaches out and rests a hand on Bastian's shoulder. "What have I told you? The doors to Fantasia can't be forced. Auryn will find you when the time is right."

"I just want it so bad," Bastian says. "I dream about them, god, all the time. And it's like they're waiting for me for something, if I could just get to them, then we could… I don't know. What was it like, when you went back? Was everything the same? Or--"

"No," Mr. Coreander said. "It wasn't the same at all. Every time. Every time, the story had gone one without me. Everything changes, Bastian. Even Fantasia. Sometimes especially Fantasia."

Bastian sweeps and dusts and packs and unpacks boxes, files papers and dusts some more. With every new old book he touches, he learns to stop anticipating the pull.

Seventeen turns into eighteen, and soon enough twenty and more. He finishes college, moves away from home, falls in love more than once, and has his heart broken each time. The dreams come less often.

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_Atreyu never gets his hunt for the Purple Buffalo, but he becomes a man nonetheless. His shoulders grow broad and strong, and his face handsome enough to make some women blush when he smiles at them. Despite her name, when they stand together it is clear that Moonchild is no child. She has become nearly as of a height with him and her hands are just as rough from bow and sword. When Atreyu looks at her now, he barely remembers the her that came before._

_More and more, the morning finds Moonchild tucked close into the curve of his body. In those quiet moments before she blinks her eyes open, Atreyu feels as though he is underwater, breathless and desperate for the surface. There is something coming, but something missing.  
_  
  
Bastian wakes up early on a cool autumn morning with a bone-deep restlessness. He showers and makes breakfast, burning his toast the first time. He stands in front of his kitchen window and stares out at a raven that is staring back at him. The feeling grows.

He tries to read, but his eyes won't settle on the page, so instead he goes for a run with no destination in mind. The air is crisp and sharp in his lungs when he breathes in, and there is a distant smell of wood smoke. At the corner of the park where he would normally turn left, something tugs at him. He turns right on instinct.

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_The fight has gone on for hours, and the great black dragon rises again. Flame and acrid smoke pour past razor sharp teeth as it snarls at Falkor. The black dragon screeches and strikes with a swipe of claws, but Falkor's luck is strong and he dodges the blow. On the ground, Atreyu and Moonchild stand with arrows drawn with practiced ease and take aim._

_Atreyu's arrow flies first. It strikes deep into the dragon's haunch. As it turns for vengeance, Moonchild takes her shot in the moment between breaths and it finds her mark. The jagged-blade of the arrowhead tears at the soft flesh under the dragon's jaw, and the creature seems to hang in air as if suspended from a string for a moment before it falls crashing to the ground._

_Falkor swoops lazily downward in contracting spirals until he comes to light beside them on solid ground. Together, the three walked back to the ravaged town, Falkor between with their hands reaching out from time to time to rest against his battle-warmed scales._

_"Well done, my friends," Falkor says, preening under their touch. "Bastian's stories have been resolved!"_  
  
He runs faster, and the faintest shadow of of a thought begins to coalesce. He pushes it away, focuses on the solid reality of the pavement under his feet.

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_In the town they are met with gratitude in the form of food, drink, and dance. Young women and men are lined up waiting for their turn to dance with Atreyu and Moonchild and to tempt them with sweet words of beds and pleasure.  
_

_Moonchild accepts a crown of bright daisy's from a young girl and hears her say as she walks away, "Momma, my friends say that Moonchild is the Childlike Empress. That there's an imposter sitting in her place in the Ivory Tower."_

_"Foolishness," says her mother, taking the child's hand, and glancing back overher shoulder at Moonchild. "The Empress in the Ivory Tower holds us together, and she only watches us. That is as it has ever been and ever will be. She is unchanging."_

_Moonchild smiles and takes Atreyu's hand, stepping into the Dance. They spin from one partner to another, until at last they are facing each other at the center of the revel. His hands fall to her hips, and she clings to his shoulders, and she feels everything around them fall away._

_She presses her body close and, tired of waiting, kisses him for the first time with a lover's mouth. She feels the flex of his fingers where they sit on her and the surge of his body against hers.  
_

_She doesn't hear the crowd holler their vulgar approval as she draws him through the crowd toward the small stone inn.  
_

_The Dance whirls on without them into the darkest part of the night. In a small room away and above, they build a song and rhythm of their own, a canon of hands and lips upon bare skin, gasping breaths, and promises._  
  
He comes around a corner too fast and too close and collides into a woman carrying two heavy bags of groceries. They topple to the ground together in a tangle, and one of the bags spills it's contents, cans of soup rolling away.

"Sorry, sorry, oh my god, I'm so sorry!" Bastian gasps, stammering and scrambling. He keeps apologizing as he helps her to her feet and gathers up her escaped minestrone and chicken noodle. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Yeah, that's obvious," she says, hissing as she brushing dirt and gravel from her hands. "Just, geeze, just pay attention and not to plow down anybody else, would you?"

"I will. I mean, I won't. I mean," Bastian sighs, and puts the cans back into her bag. He rubs a hand over his face. "Sorry again."

She waves him off and walks away, muttering about idiot runners.

Bastian shakes his head, and turns to start on his way home when he realizes the urge and the energy to run is gone.  He laughs at himself, not even sure how far he's come but suddenly struck with the fact that he doesn't recognize the street he's on.

"Unbelievable, Bastian," he says to himself. "Well done. Now you're going to have to call a cab just to get home."

There are no pay phones on the block, and most of the stores are still dark. But there is a small curio shop on the corner with an open sign on display.

Bastian walks toward it.

"Hello?" Bastian says, pushing open the door. "Hello, excuse me? Is there anyone here? I was hoping you might have a phone I could use."

No one answers, but on the counter there is a phone. An old black bakelite rotary model.

Bastian picks up the heavy black receiver and dials. The call rings through and he waits for someone at the cab company to pick up. He glances down at the counter and notices a display of old fashioned lever-lock keys for sale, heavy iron things thick cut bits and ornate collars and bows. There is one that stops him, the dual colored twisted metal of its bow familiar. He reaches out.

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_Moonchild rests her head on Atreyu's shoulder as he sleeps. With a gentle finger, she traces the twinned and twining serpents of Auryn._

_"You're so close," she whispers. "There is room for you here, if this is still a place you want to be."_  
  
The moment he touches it, he feels it. The pull and the click of things falling into place. He smiles.

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The door opens.  
  
 


End file.
